Hamlet: Contrast Plays A Major Role In William Shakespeare's Hamlet, contrast plays a major role. Characters have foils, scenes and ideas contrast each other, sometimes within the same soliloquy. One such contrast occurs in Act Five, Scene One, in the graveyard. Here, the relatively light mood in the first half is offset by the grave and somber mood in the second half. The scene opens with two "clowns", who function as a sort of comic relief. This is necessary, after the tension of Ophelia's breakdown (and subsequent death), and after the ever-increasing complexities of the plot. Previously, Polonious pr